


New Dresden

by Eligh



Category: Smut Peddler (2012)
Genre: Age Difference, Crossdressing, Gangsters, Growing Up, M/M, Not Really a Fandom?, noir
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-30
Updated: 2014-08-30
Packaged: 2018-02-15 10:49:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2226270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eligh/pseuds/Eligh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Robert's known Kiril all his life. Some might call it inevitable.</p>
            </blockquote>





	New Dresden

**Author's Note:**

> So the explanation for this one is, uh. Well. So I stumbled across this lovely [little anthology](http://ironcircus.com/shop/ebooks/13-smut-peddler-pdf-ebook.html) of impeccable pornographies a while back and have spent the last several months absolutely obsessed with one story in particular. It's entitled 'Travesty,' and is written by Ursula Wood, drawn by Jennifer Doyle. It's got 20's era men, drag, a haunting story... I can't get enough. In fact, I can't get it out of my head, and I want more! So I wrote more. It's the leadup to this wonderful comic, or at least my take on it. 
> 
> Anyway, I don't usually disclaim anything in my writing, because transformative works are one thing. But this seems more like treading a line, I guess? I don't want to offend the creators, and I can't explain enough how impressed I was by the power of this short story that they created for this awesome book. I wrote this out of a place of love, but these are _not_ my characters. 
> 
> I would suggest downloading the pdf, or buying the physical book. Really, it's wonderful. All sex-positive, gender- positive, empowering stuff. And for those of you wondering what Doyle's vision of what these characters look like is, [here's](http://elighrawleywrites.weebly.com/screenshot.html) a link to a screenshot.

The first time I met Kiril Ivonovitch Dragomirov was in my father’s shop, which is unsurprising. The first time I met many men—men who would later be my employers, my colleagues (to use such a generous word for my line of work) and my enemies, was in my father’s shop.

It was raining that day—or at least I think it was, though it rains so often here that that I may just be misremembering another unending downpour that punctuated that moment. Kiril wasn’t distinctive at the time, you see; my father often had ‘friends’ over with whom he argued loudly in the storeroom, and those friends often brought strange men that stood motionless next to our counter. They never looked at me, though. Why would they? I was just another son of another man, irrelevant to their work.

The only one that ever looked at me was Kiril.

It was early, at least—I do remember that, because I’d stolen my father’s coffee when one of his regular ‘friends’ burst into the shop that morning and demanded to talk, and he only ever drank coffee before my mother got up and demanded he switch to tea.

The man that day had a thick accent—something Slavic—but not as thick as some, and I later learned that he was Kiril’s brother. I think he’d been in New Dresden a long time already by that point, though I’m not sure if that’s true. Kiril never spoke about him later, after we became close.

But I remember stealing the coffee, filling it up with milk and sugar, and sliding into place behind the register, very pleased with my oh-so-adult drink. I remember my father looking resigned and a little annoyed, and I remember my father’s friend’s friend settling into place at the end of the counter.

“你想喝点什么?” I asked him, ‘ _would you like something to drink_ ’ in Mandarin, because I was five years old and didn’t realize that not everyone spoke my tongue. He looked at me, uncomprehending. To this day, I’m still a little shocked I said anything at all, but he was younger than most of our visitors, a teenager with unruly blond hair and wide blue eyes. Most of the men that came into the shop made me nervous, but I was never scared of Kiril.

“Eengliss?” He asked me, almost incomprehensible by the slur his mouth made of the word, unused to the foreign alphabet. I was no better, of course, so I held up the cup I had cradled in my hand and watched as his face relaxed into understanding.

“Pliss,” he said, nodding, and so I shakily poured him a cup, my young muscles unused to the act of service, and pushed it across the counter.

~

Kiril came back regularly after that, eventually settling enough that he sat at the counter instead of looming at the end, and every time I poured him a cup of our bitter coffee and handed it to him. He thanked me in Russian those first few times, but one day he—quite unexpectedly—said _Xièxiè._

He watched me, his face worried, and then asked, “Correct? I say?”

I remember smiling. “ _Da_ ,” I told him.

He smiled back.

~

“My name is Robert,” I said immediately after I’d poured his usual cup of coffee the next time I saw him. I’d been practicing my English, and was anxious to try it out. I’d be starting school soon, and didn’t want to act the fool. “I am six years old today.”

He murmured something in Russian into his cup, but was smiling when he looked up. “I am Kiril,” he told me. “I am eighteen.”

“You’ve been here a few months,” I added carefully, concentrating on saying the words correctly, on using contractions. Kiril never bothered at English much as I did. He never even came close to losing his accent. “Are you learning English, too?”

“Da,” he said, then shook his head, and his smile turned rueful. “I mean, yes. Is good to practice, yes?”

“Yes,” I agreed, and we went back to our respective drinks.

~

“What do they talk about?” I asked, and Kiril looked at me, eyebrows raised, before glancing towards the swinging door that led into my father’s storeroom. The voices inside had quieted down, their conflict apparently resolved. I sighed. “They always argue.”

“You should not concern yourself,” he told me. “You are child. Their business is matter for adults.”

I screwed up my face. “I’m old enough.”

The half-smile that slipped onto his face is one I’d become intimately familiar with in later years, but I think this conversation was the first time I’d ever seen it.

“You are seven.”

“Almost eight!” I was very defensive of my age.

He shrugged. “Still seven. You are too young for business like this.”

“Well,” I accused, coffee forgotten, “when did _you_ start helping with your brother’s business?” By this point, I was fairly sure the ‘business’ conducted in the back room was something that we didn’t—shouldn’t—talk about. I knew that my father usually put money in the register after emerging from the back, and that the men he argued with usually seemed satisfied when they left. Sometimes their eyes were glassy, or they sniffed a lot, or they staggered a little.

Kiril’s brother never sniffed or staggered, but he did always seem pleased when he walked out of our store, and had a habit of patting affectionately at the inner pocket that lined his coat against his chest.

Kiril frowned. “Not until I come from Moscow. And then, I was eighteen, and adult. Which you are not.”

“Oh,” I said, dejected. Eighteen was such a long way away.

~

“You do well in school?” Kiril asked me, straining to read my schoolbooks upside down from his spot across the counter. His brow was furrowed in concentration, making him look older than he was.

“I do fine,” I said, shrugging. “I’m better at other things, though.”

“Other things?” He looked up, smiling, and teased, “What ‘other things’ must nine-year-old boy be good at?”

I frowned at him. “Sport. Running.” I stuck out my lip, and he rolled his in, trying not to laugh at my petulance. I floundered for a moment, craving his approval, and then added, “My teacher says I have a good singing voice.”

“Very important,” he told me, mock-serious, and then reached across the counter and ruffled my hair. I batted his hand away, but by then I was smiling, too. Of all the muscle my father’s friends brought, Kiril was the best.

I always looked forward to the days when he would come.

His smile now was lazy, and he reached across the counter to snag a pencil from next to the register, then fished a napkin from a nearby holder. “School is important, too, Robert. You must learn.” He pointed the pencil at me. “You are lucky you have easy access to education. I was not so fortunate.”

“So you didn’t have to learn math?” I glared down at my book, x’s and y’s swimming before my eyes.

“I did not _get_ to,” he told me softly. “There is difference.” He spread the napkin tight between his splayed fingers and sketched something quickly, glancing up at me once or twice. I watched, curious, and then beamed when he put the pencil down and pushed the napkin over the counter.

“You say you have good voice,” he said. “I have a way with pencil.” I looked down; the drawing on the rough paper was simple, but definitely me, that day’s scowl firmly in place. Kiril’s signature was scrawled at the bottom, only the K and latter half of his surname really legible.

“Wow,” I breathed. “Thanks, Kiril.”

He shrugged and stood up; the door to the back room swung open and my father and his brother emerged, speaking rapidly in Russian, arms amicably around each other’s shoulders. Kiril pointed a finger at me before turning to follow his brother out the front door. “Do not lose this napkin,” he said, brow furrowed but teasing. “Is masterpiece. Will be worth millions someday.”

“Sure,” I said, laughing, and he smiled at me.

I still have it to this day, tucked between the pages of a thick book.  

~

“Your father tells me you are ten years old today!” Kiril’s brother had a booming voice, and he smiled too wide. I didn’t like him, but my father gave me a warning look from behind his back and so I smiled back.

“Yes, sir.” Behind him, Kiril tilted his head but said nothing. He’d wished me a happy birthday already, and my pocket was heavy with the whittled whistle he’d pushed across the counter for me.

“Ten is important age,” Kiril’s brother boomed, and clapped a heavy hand on my shoulder. “Ten means you are almost a man.”

I straightened up a little at that, pleased, and Kiril’s brother beamed. “I have a daughter,” he said, dropping his voice, and a sneak glance at Kiril rewarded me with a roll of his eyes at his brother’s theatrics. “She is ten, like you. Pretty girl.”

My father looked thoughtful, and said something in rapid Russian to Kiril’s brother. They both laughed, but Kiril frowned. I’ve always wished that I knew what they said.

~

The next time Kiril and his brother came to our shop, they were accompanied by a girl my age. She was introduced as Zoya, and she was told to wait at the counter where Kiril usually sat. For the first time, Kiril went into the back with his brother and my father, but not before shooting me a small smile. His beard was beginning to fill, red-blond, though his hair was much more yellow. It framed his face like it’d never done before, and I remember thinking that it was odd that I noticed.

I fixed Zoya tea and tried not to resent her stealing her uncle's place at my counter.

~

The boys that surrounded me that day the summer after I turned eleven were all bigger, older, but I wasn’t exactly small. Already tall for my age, I was wiry and fast, and had spent the last several months learning street boxing on the sly from Kiril’s brother.

“Ви не повинні бути тут, малюк,” the biggest one said. I caught a few words, but Ukrainian is different than Russian, and his accent was unfamiliar. I snarled.

“I’m looking for Kiril Ivonovitch Dragomirov,” I told them. “He won’t be happy if you stop me.”

Another burst of Ukrainian, and they all laughed. I didn’t catch exactly what it was they said, but it was something about ‘loving men,’ and they seemed to latch onto that, expanding on the theme as they circled me. I clenched my fists and set my face, intent on defending Kiril’s honor, and that’s when they moved in.

The next few minutes were a blur; to this day, I have no idea exactly what happened. It was the first time I ever really fought, and I like to think that even without Kiril’s interference, I would have come out on top. I probably wouldn’t have.

But interfere he did, caught me around the waist and lifted me away from the melee, my nose streaming blood, my knuckles smarting. He barked angrily at the boys, a couple of them sitting shocked and bleeding on the ground, a couple others raging and furious from their feet.

“Robert!” he shouted at me, tugging me by the arm down the street, fuming even after we’d left the boys behind. “What were you thinking?”

“I didn’t start it!” I yelled back, adrenaline pumping. “I just wanted to find you, and they stopped me and then they called you a—a—a buggerer, and me a catamite, which, I don’t know what that is, but I couldn’t let them _say_ that!”

Kiril’s face twisted into something complicated and he glanced back over his shoulder, though we were long out of sight of those boys. For a moment, he seemed about to say something, and I froze, worried. But then he shook his head and sighed. “Let us stop your nose from bleeding,” he ordered instead, and pulled out his handkerchief. He smiled painfully. “And you should learn. Six against one is not good odds, Robert.”

“I was doing okay,” I muttered, but took the offered cloth gratefully, pressed it to my throbbing nose.

“Боже мой” Kiril muttered, and rubbed his eyes. But then he ruffled my hair and smiled, and everything was fine again.

~

“Your face looks weird with glasses,” I told Kiril. He glared at me in response, and I smiled. “Well, it does.”

There was a pause, during which he tugged his new spectacles off his nose and inspected them. “At least,” he said, blue eyes darting up to meet mine, a smirk threatening to spill over his lips, “my face does not _always_ look weird. You, however…”

“Cruel,” I sighed, leaning on the counter.

“Alas,” he sighed back, mirroring my position. “Such is life.”

His brother and Zoya weren’t present today. Kiril had wandered in half an hour ago, hat and duster soaked from the afternoon drizzle, new glasses fogged and useless. He’d demanded coffee, muttering something half in Russian about how my bitter brew had ruined him for proper coffee shops.

I was just pleased to see him. This was the first time he’d ever shown up without business, and it fed my fantasy that we were really friends.

In my head, he wasn’t a gangster’s muscle, and I wasn’t the twelve-year-old son of a drug dealer. I didn’t spend my days after school making the shop look legit, and he didn’t spend his nights (probably) breaking the bones of people his brother told him to. Instead, we were just two guys—two _men_ —who could shoot the shit and talk about nothing for hours. We could drink coffee and laugh at passers-by, have inside jokes and share knowing smiles.

It was stupid, and I knew it. Kiril wasn’t _really_ my friend. He was, at best, humoring a client’s kid, the boy his brother had decided would be a good match for his niece. Maybe one day, if Kiril’s brother got his way, I could call him uncle. But not _friends._

But when he smiled at me after making a face over my tar-bitter coffee, there was nothing to stop me from pretending.

~

Zoya kissed me for the first time when I was thirteen, a peck on the cheek when Kiril and his brother were talking to my grieving father in front of the store. It was two weeks after my sister was born, and two weeks after my mother had died. I was very sad, and Zoya whispered condolences in my ear and wrapped her thin, pale arms around me.

I sniffled into her shoulder, but didn’t cry.

Later, after their business was done and Zoya was waiting at the front of the store for her father and uncle, Kiril paused at the counter before stepping around it for the first time, and pulled me into a hug.

“Be strong,” he told me softly, and smiled our private smile. “You are a good boy, you will help your father and your sister.”

This time, when I pushed my face against his chest, there was no way that I could stop the tears. He stroked my head and whispered soft words in a harsh tongue, and for the first time in weeks I felt marginally better.

~

I couldn’t drag my eyes away from the cast that wrapped up Kiril’s arm. The plaster was a dingy grey, ragged looking and rough.

“What happened?” I asked, but Kiril just shook his head.

“Shush, child. Does not matter.” He patted the back of my hand with his free one and tried on a smile. “A cup of coffee would help, maybe?”

I nodded and turned to fix his cup, utterly mechanic and moving by muscle memory. I couldn’t drop the subject, though, so when I clinked the china to the scarred surface of the counter in front of him, I burst out, “But you _never_ get hurt, your brother doesn’t—”

“My brother?” Kiril interrupted sharply. “This is what happens when my brother is angry.” He snapped his mouth shut, then, and shook his head. “ебля—” He sighed. “Do not glamorize my life, Robert. Is not something I wish on you.”

I stared at him, the silence between us dragging out.

“Yea,” I finally said, and he breathed out a sigh. Relief, maybe.

But Kiril—well, he was usually right. But not about this. I was big for my age, and strong, too. Kiril may not think all problems could be solved with fists, but I begged to differ. Plus, his brother wasn’t so scary anymore, now that I was older, a near-man of fourteen. He’d been flattering me recently, having me run errands for him, deliver messages. I was useful, and maybe someday I could have a job with him like Kiril’s. I could provide for my family.

So yes, Kiril may have wanted me to stay away from his kind of work, but what else was there for a poor boy growing up rough?

~

“Put it on for me,” Zoya ordered. My face was on fire, but she just raised her eyebrows and pushed the slip of cloth closer. We were sitting in an abandoned boxcar at the edge of town, high on the hormones of fifteen year olds, utterly alone. Perhaps, I reasoned, if I put it on, she would let me kiss her again, maybe let me slip my hand up her shirt.

It was something I was supposed to want, wasn’t it? Kissing girls, touching them?

“Fine,” I said, and took the fabric, spreading it out at chest height, examining it. It was a dress, black and silky, with delicate silver roses embroidered along the hemlines. Its bottommost edge would fall low on my thighs if I slipped it on over my head, and I took a breath and made to do so.

“No,” Zoya said, interrupting me. “Get undressed first. It doesn’t count if you’re wearing slacks.”

Redder than ever, I averted my eyes but unbuttoned my shirt, and my slacks, shrugging and kicking them off quickly. I picked up the dress again, but Zoya tsk’ed, eyebrow raised, and pointed at my shorts.

“I’m not taking those off,” I whispered. “Zoya, no.”

She crossed her arms and turned half-away, pouting.

“Fine,” I said, acting exasperated, but… more willing than I wanted her to know. Honestly, I was a little excited. I wasn’t sure what to make of that urge. “Fine.”

The dress… it felt good against my bare skin. More than good. The slip of silk caught against the fine new hair on my thighs, the flat planes of my chest making the fall of cloth slightly awkward. Zoya smiled and leaned in to kiss me, which was nice, but nothing compared to what I was feeling inside.

Riots of pleasure, a feeling of rightness, an edge of fear.

She stared for a long time, her slender fingers playing with the hem brushing my thighs, a small smile on her face.

“You’re pretty, Robert,” she said, and I blushed.

But when she kissed me again, I had another jolt of something new; pictured her hands as broader, her body firmer, warmer, spectacles across her nose instead of her smattering of freckles, a rough brush of red-blond stubble on her face.

The fear grew, but it felt so good.

~

I was tall and mature for sixteen, and more than anxious to be done with school, which to my impatient mind, was more than useless by this point. Years in my rough neighborhood—and the tutelage of Kiril’s brother—had taught me that fists often spoke easier than words, and other boys had learned to avoid me on the street. School was something I was only mediocre at, unless you counted my singing classes—which I didn’t. Fighting, on the other hand… At that, I excelled.

Best of all, sometimes now my father let me follow him when he visited his friends’ shops, and I stood there at their counters and listened to them argue in other men’s back rooms. I never talked to their sons behind their counters, because my father disapproved. I wasn’t a chatty like Kiril had been.

This day, though, I was behind our own register, my eye blackened but with several crisp bills tucked into the front pocket of my slacks, payment from Kiril’s brother for reminding another boy the order of things.

When the bell over the door jingled, I looked up, beaming when I saw who it was, and Kiril smiled back just long enough to take in my bruised face before his own fell.

“Robert,” he breathed. “You have been fighting again.”

I smiled wide and leaned against the counter, ignoring the tight pull of swollen skin at my cheek. “No, I’ve been winning.”

He stared at me for a long moment before looking away, and down. “Zoya has asked for you.”

I sighed, good mood almost immediately lost. “Your niece should make up her mind.”

“My niece,” Kiril frowned at the scarred surface of my counter, “has no idea what she wants.” He looked up at me. “But she does not _deserve_ a brawling child, Robert. I thought you better than this.”

I tensed, straightening my back to my full height. I was almost as tall as Kiril now, would probably pass him in the next year. “What else am I good for, Dragomirov? What have you been good for in your life?”

Kiril’s face hardened. “You have other skills, despite what my brother tells you.”

“What,” I scoffed. “Singing? That will serve me well, will it? What am I to do with that?”

“Anything,” Kiril growled. “You are _educated_ , Robert. You have more options than you think!” He looked pained. “You could go to university.”

“Pah.” I crossed my arms and looked away, every inch the petulant child I was trying so hard not to be. “I make money bashing in heads. And I can take over my father’s business when I’m older.”

Kiril leaned heavily against the counter, his expression hurt. “This… how can you want this? What about your sister?”

I raised an eyebrow. “It pays the bills.”

He inspected my face, and shook his head at whatever he found there. “Innocent, idiot boy,” he spat, then spun on his heel and stalked out. I shouted after him, something about not being a boy any longer, but he ignored me.

Fuck him, anyway.

~

“We are friends, yes Robert?” Kiril asked me, his eyes turned down, inspecting his mug. I was still smarting from our argument a few weeks prior, but with those words, my pathetic fantasies of brotherhood with this man came sweeping back full force. I couldn’t help but smile.

“Yes, I think so,” I told him, soft. In the back room, his brother shouted at my father, and my father shouted back. Kiril nodded slowly.

“I am… going away. For a little while. But I will be back someday. I want to ask… you will be my friend when I return?”

Unexpectedly, I felt nauseous. “Wha—why are you leaving?”

His smile was entirely faked. “Is best for many people. I am… making enemies. Moscow is safer, at least for now.” He looked up. “But when I return?”

“We’ll still be friends,” I told him, earnest. I could never not be friends with Kiril. He was—he meant too much.

“Good,” he said, and nodded, then smirked into his cup. “I will not miss your coffee.”

“Liar,” I said, and he smiled.

~

Zoya’s not around this time.

It’s just me, in my bedroom, staring at my reflection in the mirror. I can hear my father coughing in the other room, my sister playing dolls in her own room, but my door is locked I’m stuffed into satin women’s panties, garters, stockings. I found a tube of my mother’s old lipstick behind the dresser in my father’s room and I lean forward now, inspecting my face as I smear it over my mouth.

I’m hard.

I think of Kiril, alone in Moscow, and shudder out a breath.

~

“Women,” Kiril’s brother tutted, leaning on the counter and watching his daughter’s retreating back. My face was stinging from where she’d slapped it, and I brought my palm up to cover my cheek in a daze. Kiril’s brother eyed me. “May you never be cursed with daughters, Robert.” He sighed. “Or headstrong sisters. This is unfortunate, though. I had hoped…”

“Perhaps she’ll still marry me,” I muttered, not believing my own words and silently cheering her (much justified) anger. I’d been a horrible suitor for at least the last six months. It wasn’t nice, but she deserved better than I could give, and since our match had been arranged by her father and mine… I couldn’t call it off. _She_ could, though.

She should marry a man who could find it in himself to be attracted to her. Still… this could be delicate. I glanced at Kiril’s brother. “Our families… I can apologize.”

He waved his hand dismissively. “Maybe, maybe. But it might not have been for the best, after all. Has your father told you?”

I shook my head, annoyed now at the reminder of my father’s recent closed lips, but equally curious, hopeful I’d finally find out what was going on. “He refuses to include me in business matters until I turn eighteen.”

Kiril’s brother snorted derisively. “Only two months or so away, yes? You are a man already, and smart. You should know.” He leaned across the counter, then, face serious. In that moment, he looked so much like Kiril it hurt, the loss of my friend suddenly as fresh as if it was the day he’d slumped sadly out of the store.

“Family Dragomirov is leaving New Dresden. _America_ , now, this is place for the real money.” He tapped the side of his nose shrewdly. “You should think about coming. Zoya wants to go. If you come…” he trailed off, shrugging.

“I’ll think about it,” I said, my mind already racing. _America._ That could be… exciting. “My father…”

“Can sell his wares without your presence,” Kiril’s brother muttered. “And we would not leave him unprotected. But _you,_ you would be asset to our family, Robert. You are a useful man.” He squeezed my bicep and smiled toothily.

 “I’ll think about it,” I repeated, and he nodded, pleased.

~

The steamer ship made me seasick, the Russians were less friendly than I’d anticipated, and I got only as far as London before the telegram reached me.

It seemed I wasn’t meant for America after all.

~

The doctor said it was a heart attack, but I wasn’t so sure. Heart attacks don’t usually come days after a man’s son—and major front of protection—had left the city, and usually weren’t heralded with stolen merchandise and destroyed property. But who could I ask for help? The Dragomirovs were gone, long on their way to America. So, the police?

Yes, hello officer, I’d like to report my opium missing, my cocaine, my heroin. Yes, of course I’ll come with you to your station.

“Robert,” my sister pleaded, tugging on my hand. “Robert, I’m cold, I want to go home.”

“Just a little longer,” I muttered, but I picked her up, light enough even at five that I could hold her in one arm. I was her father now, or as good as. Her real father was in the ground in front of us, grave dirt made muddy by New Dresden’s endless rain.

She fell asleep in my arms eventually, and I didn’t blame her. I covered her head the best I could, protecting it from the damp, and nodded as the last of my father’s friends filed away from his grave.

I was scared, and alone, and felt very young.

“Robert.”

The Cyrillic accent was familiar even after a year apart, and I let out a soft sob, turning fast. Kiril caught me, steadying me with his hands on my shoulders. He searched my face, then brushed a tear from my sister’s cheek before pulling me in, nestling her between us when he wrapped his arms around my back.

“I heard,” he said, his lips brushing against my ear. I shuddered, but he didn’t notice. “My brother sent me to help you. He feels… at least a little responsible.”  

“Thank god,” I whispered back, and he snorted.

“If you thank anyone, thank my brother.”

“He’s too full of himself already,” I forced out, and standing next to my father’s grave, I rested my forehead against the shoulder of one of my oldest friends as we laughed in the rain.

~

Kiril was washing blood off his knuckles in the bathroom of my new flat, his tie undone, his hair wild. “I could reclaim your product tonight,” he told me. I glanced over my shoulder at the kitchen; my sister was coloring at the table, oblivious.

“No,” I said after a long pause, and Kiril looked at me in the mirror, surprised. I smiled ruefully. “I don’t want to sell things like that anymore. I’ve found… I _think_ I’ve found other employment.” I thought of the card tucked deep into the pocket of my duster, the club’s name discreet, the owner’s number something I’d memorized instead of writing down.

Kiril hmm’ed, a touch disbelieving. “Does your work involve what we did tonight?” He eyed the blood spattered in an arc across the white of my collar, the bandages on my own knuckles he’d insisted on dressing before seeing to himself.

I shrugged. “Sometimes, when I need the money. But not usually.”

“You know I don’t like you in this life,” he told me quietly. Of course I knew. He’d never been shy about his opinion on this, and… I was even starting to agree with him a little. But I didn’t say anything that night. If all else failed, breaking heads never left me unable to pay the bills. And I had my sister to think of, now. It was one thing when I was just her brother. It was another now that I was her everything. Her only thing.

“Are you staying?” I asked instead of answering him.

He stared at me, turning from the mirror to inspect me more thoroughly. “For a while,” he said slowly, and I smiled.

~

It was strange at first, with Kiril there but no one else. We developed a habit, meeting every morning for coffee in an actual shop, one that wasn’t associated with either of our families. Our conversation was easy, though Kiril always tensed if I appeared with new bruises. At this point, I was still working up my nerves to call the club, and was making ends meet by playing bruiser to the family who’d started to take over the Dragomirov territory. It was easy enough, if a little dangerous. The Martellis were fair, though, so I could do worse.

The night of my twentieth birthday, the woman down the hall watched my sister while Kiril and I went out. New Dresden is a good place to drink, and our night started with sake and sushi in the Japanese quarter, followed by beer and vodka in a dingy Russian joint I’d never seen before.

“Iss too much,” I slurred happily, late, late, late, down the street from my building. Kiril and I were in a park, sprawled next to each other on a bench, our thighs touching, our shoulders bumping. I better angled the sheet of paper Kiril had just handed me into the light from a street lamp and smiled.

It was a drawing, much more intricate than the one I had tucked away in my room. In it, I was reading a book to my sister, her face shining with happiness. It was beautiful, and I said as much.

Kiril beamed at me. “Is sketch,” he said. “I just…”

“No, no, no,” I burbled, happy and swimming in booze. “Kiril, it’s perfect.” I reached up, clapping my hand to the back of his neck and tugging him closer, resting our foreheads together. He shivered a little, but it was cold that night, so that was understandable. “Thank you,” I breathed.

His breath hitched, but then he suddenly pulled away, breathing hard.

“You are very drunk,” he announced. “And so am I. We should—coffee. Yes.”

“Coffee!” I shouted, and he shushed me, laughing.

~

The club was packed with reveling men, all craning to see the travesty on stage. A man in a makeup and high heels, his auburn wig long and luxurious, his strapless dress barely clinging to the flat panes of his chest. He was singing a raunchy song and batting his mascaraed eyelashes at the men in the front row, and I was uncomfortably warm sitting next to the club’s owner, aware of him watching my every reaction.

“You think you could do this, Robert?”

I eyed the singer, one eye crinkling when he missed a high note. “I could do it better than him.”

“Come back tomorrow, then” he said, leaning in, amused. “I’ll give you an audition.” With that, he was gone, melting into the crowd. I leaned back in my chair and sipped at my drink, taking in every movement of the man on stage. Taking it in, that is, until I caught a flash of familiar blond, a twinkle of low-set spectacles.

I pushed through the crowd in a flash, not ready to believe it, but then there he was, watching the show silently from a shadowed side table. I _still_ couldn’t believe it, not really, and sank into the seat opposite him without announcing myself.

Kiril glanced over, aggravation on his face until he realized who I was, at which point his expression transformed into one of utter horror.

“R-Robert!”

I stared at him and he stared back, his eyes wide and terrified. He leaned over the table abruptly. “Do not tell my brother,” he ordered, and I blinked.

“I’m here too, aren’t I?” I asked, raising my voice a little to be heard over the band. Kiril relaxed slightly at this, though he still looked like he was about ready to bolt. Half-remembered accusations of his ‘confirmed bachelor’ status were rising like specters in my memory, and all at once everything seemed to slot into place.

“Why, though?” he asked, obviously confused. He looked up at the man on stage, then back at me. “My niece—”

I arched an eyebrow. “I didn’t marry your niece, did I?” To be fair, my aggravation with him this night was entirely unwarranted; what, had I expected him to announce ‘ _I am homosexual,_ ’ to me, the son of one of his brother’s best partners? The man who had once been slated to marry his niece? An honorary Dragomirov, protected in everything but name?

And him, a thug of a Russian, a boogeyman, notorious muscle? Of course he didn’t tell me, no more than I would have told him that I wore women’s undergarments beneath my pressed slacks, that I had dresses hanging at the back of my closet, that a locked box held my shameful stash of makeup.

“I—” He floundered, and I shook my head.

I left him at the table, his mouth shocked open.

~

I didn’t see him for weeks.

~

My first night at the club, I smeared my mascara too badly, my hands shaking, and was almost late to curtain because I had to wash my face and reapply it.

But when I stepped on stage…

I flirted, and I giggled, and I flashed my leg. The audience—a smaller one than the night I’d come to watch—laughed and catcalled, enjoying the insanity. A few of them blushed, and even fewer watched with eyes wide and full of quiet longing.

It was wonderful. The slip slide of my dress against my stomach, the ruffle of my boa’s feathers, the curl of blonde in my wig—it all felt good and right. I was comfortable like I’d never been before. Free.

I avoided looking at the shadowed table in the back of the room for most of the night, but I could feel his eyes on me. And when I sashayed off the stage, my set done, I just couldn’t help myself.

Kiril’s face was flushed, apparent even in the low light. He was hunched over, his hands tightened into fists between his knees, and he watched me, his eyes hooded. I bit my lip, the unfamiliar tackiness of stage-thick lipstick sticking to my teeth. His mouth opened a little, a silent gasp from across the room, and then I was backstage and out of sight.

~

“You cannot,” Kiril told me the moment I opened my door later that night. He was leaning against the frame, hands spread on either side of the jamb, breathing heavily. He smelled like vodka, and his eyes were glassy.

I frowned. “Can’t what?”

He pushed his way inside my flat, noisy until I hushed him, reminding him that my sister was sleeping. “Come on,” I muttered, guiding him into my bedroom and at least some semblance of privacy. He sat heavily on the edge of my bed, buried his face in his hands.

I was beyond annoyed, exhausted, the adrenaline from my first performance waning fast. “Can’t _what,_ ” I repeated, hands on my hips.

“Go on that stage again,” he whispered, looking up. “Men will look at you, and they are full of lust.”

Something in me snapped, and I rumbled out, quiet and dangerous, “What makes you think I would mind that?”

He shook his head vehemently, barely hearing my words. “No, you are a _boy_. They have no right…”

“I am twenty,” I snarled, advancing on him. “I am not a boy. Would you rather I traffic drugs like my father, and get myself killed like him too? Leave my sister alone? Or should I kill people, like you? I _thought_ you said you didn’t want that for me.”

“I do not,” he whimpered, his hands reaching out and grabbing at my wrists. “Robert, ребенок…”

“I am _not_ a child, Kiril!” I snapped, before catching myself and lowering my voice, hissing angrily. “And there is something in me, I _like_ dressing like that, I _like_ their eyes on me, I like _men_ , there’s—it’s—” I cut myself off, gasping, shocked at my own confession. Kiril stared up at me, his eyes wide.

“I-I am,” he stuttered out. “Robert, forgive me, I am sick and you are—I have watched you, you have no idea, you are—”

“What? I’m _what_?” I was furious with him, my wrists flexing against his hold, but he just shook his head and wouldn’t let go.

“I tell myself again and again that you are just a boy,” he said softly, silencing me with a tight squeeze when I curled my lip. “But I _know_ that you are not, not anymore, and I cannot help how much I want you.”

I pulled away sharply, shocked, and watched his face crumple. “I am sorry,” he whispered immediately, “Robert, прости меня, please…” His accent, always strong, thickened impossibly. “I know it is wrong, I am so much older than you, but I cannot stop it, I cannot—” He buried his face again in his hands and let out a sob.

Years of fantasy, sitting there shaking on my bed. But I couldn’t.

I left, slamming the door behind me. Kiril wouldn’t follow; he cared too much about my sister. He would stay and soothe her if she woke up.

I needed to be alone.

~

“You can’t control me,” I said, and Kiril shot up from where he had been sleeping fitfully in my armchair.

“Robert—” His voice was sleep-thick and slurred, his mind struggling to catch up. Outside, it was the pale grey of pre-dawn. The building was silent except for us.

“Shut up,” I snapped, and he let out a shaky breath, looked up at me. I took a step closer. “I am grown, Kiril. We cannot keep having this argument.” He nodded, but it was slow. I bit my lip. “You’re grown, too,” I said, much softer, and I watched some sliver of hope slide onto his face.

I reached out, hesitant, and brushed my fingers along his jaw; he closed his eyes and angled his head closer. My breath punched out of my chest as sharply as if I’d taken a blow.

“Kiril,” I whispered, and then he was standing, crowding me back, pressing my hands into the wall of my sitting room. His lips brushed my throat.

“Robert,” he said again, this word his entire contribution to our conversation. I could feel the rumble of my name in his chest, and I gasped.

“…Please.” I didn’t know what I was asking of him, but I would ask it all the same.

~

I had never had sex. My experiences with Zoya had been mostly innocent; her unwilling to proceed until marriage, myself discouragingly uninterested. There had been another boy in my sixth form, a single inebriated kiss about which we’d never discussed after that night.

And then Kiril.

He shuddered over me, consuming my awareness, his expression rapturous and awed. I writhed underneath him, overstimulated, my prick harder than I’d ever realized it could get. I begged, I sobbed, I gasped and cried out. He cooed and pressed fever kisses into my skin, across my cheeks, down my chest. He took me in his mouth, and used slick fingers upon me, within me.

He filled me, lit me with fire, and toppled me from a mountain’s precipice.

We sinned, and we did it beautifully.

~

My bedroom reeked of sex and the release of men. I was glad my sister didn’t often come in here.

Kiril breathed beside me, his bare skin pale in the early dawn light. He had freckles on his chest, and a light spattering of soft hair. His fingers twitched. “Robert,” he asked, turning to me, everything he couldn’t say out loud wrapped up in my name.

This—he and I—would probably not end well. We both knew it. We are gangsters at heart, hard men who lead rough lives. There is blood on both our hands, but there is more to life than our histories. And I was trying, really I was, though I knew in my heart that my time at the club either wouldn’t last forever, or rapidly become too little to support both myself and my sister. I would always have to go back to my day job, pay the bills.

And Kiril—he was not a free man, less so even than I. His family would not let him escape into this city, absolved of any responsibilities. He was lucky they had no concrete proof of his proclivities, and so, honestly, was I. We were pushing our luck— _are_ pushing our luck, because that night was the first of many—and we both knew it.

“You are beautiful,” I told him, safe in his arms after living something I had never believed I could have happen. “我梦见你”

He smiled. “I still do not speak Chinese.”

I laughed a little. “I’ve dreamed about you,” I translated, roughly. “You said, last night, that you’ve thought about me.” I smirked. “You have no idea the things I’ve dreamt about you.”

His eyes darkened, full of promises.

To this day, despite our fights and our separations and our reunions, I believe every one.

 


End file.
